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S3 Graphics Releases Linux Driver With OpenGL 3.0, VA-API

02-27-2009, 08:50 PM

Phoronix: S3 Graphics Releases Linux Driver With OpenGL 3.0, VA-API

For months we have seen S3 Graphics advertise a magical Linux driver in their press releases that promised to offer OpenGL 3.0 support and advanced video functionality. They had reported to us the driver would be released in December, but that deadline had passed and they continued to announce Linux support when launching the Chrome 540 GTX, but still there was nothing. However, S3 Graphics has now actually delivered such a driver! They have delivered a Chrome 500 series Linux driver that not only provides OpenGL 3.0 support but also H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2 hardware decoding on the GPU. While it may appear to be good, this driver is still far from perfect.

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I guess nobody really tested that card with Linux yet. The drivers are 32 bit only and contain a binary blob for the kernel module. So they have to change the licence for it to S3 or whatever - at least not GPL.

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I seriously think that any claims by s3 at this point should be taken with a grain of salt. The fact that their decidedly closed-source driver modules report themselves as GPL ought to tell you something.

If there's someone with a Chrome 500 who can test this driver, *then* maybe we can find out how well it actually works and what its actual capabilities are.

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I hope that soon enough, you'll be able to test the driver, and the hardware on Linux, Michael. I'd really be interested in seeing how well it performs, how does it compare to the earlier tests you ran on cheap hardware and nVidia GFX with VDPAU and how well does it do 3D compared to Intel, nVidia and ATi (on reasonably similar hardware... Do we even know how many stream processors the 500 series pack or if it has a vertex engine? How about memory interface, etc?)

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S3 is already violating the GPL by distributing the binary without the source. They obviously need to claim it's GPL in order to use Linux's GPL'ed symbols. So now it's up to someone who owns copyright to the Linux kernel to sue their behind.